Hardly had the eerie music faded when I discovered the tiny yellow and white flowers, each no bigger than the head of a pin, packed together tightly in a rocky crevice just beside my hand. When I rubbed a finger across the miniature garden, I was enveloped by the scent of lilacs, roses, jasmine, and a hundred varieties of flowers that could no more live in the thin, cold air than those tiny jewels could live in lowland heat.
I was going to call D’Natheil to come and see, when I was startled by a booming, “Hello!” rolling across the lake.
He was standing on the lake shore, and he turned to me, his eyes piercingly bright. “Do you hear them?”
“Hello… hello… hello,” rang through the air, accompanied by a chorus of innumerable voices: cries of greeting, of joy, of farewell. Voices without bodies. Memories of life.
“Yes. Yes, I hear them.”
“The Gate must be somewhere beside the lake,” he said. “Come on.” He set off along the narrow shoreline, his steps as vigorous as if he were just beginning the journey.
“What of pursuers, my lord?” asked Baglos anxiously, hurrying to match his short steps with D’Natheil’s long stride.
“They’re holding back. They should have been on us by mid-morning.”
Waiting, I thought, as I hobbled after them. They’re waiting for you to show them the Gate. The Zhid didn’t know the way. I shivered, but not from the frigid wind. These Zhid were not heedless, hotheaded bullies, rushing after us ready to pounce and fight. I thought back to Montevial, to the forest, to Tryglevie. Even back to Ferrante’s house. They had stayed just close enough to follow, to prevent our escape, pushing us… herding us… to the ending. Much more dangerous. And yet we could not stop. Not now.
We examined every slab and boulder around the lake shore for a passage or entrance. Hundreds of people would have lived in the stronghold during the Rebellion: women, children, old people. No matter what destruction had overtaken them, there had to be some remnant of the space where they had slept and sheltered from the harsh winter that would settle here for all but a few weeks of the year. But in many places the ice extended right down to the water, leaving treacherous footing, or the way was blocked by boulders from ancient landslides and we had to clamber over them or slog through the icy water. Halfway around the lake from our observation spot was a long, narrow strip of sand fronting an expanse of barren cliff face, but we found no breach in the rock.
When we returned to our starting point, D’Natheil picked up a rock and slung it into the water, breaking the gray wind-ripples. “We’re missing something.”
“Four hundred and fifty years,” said Baglos. “Perhaps there’s nothing left.”
“No, it’s here. I’m sure of it. I’ve been here before…” D’Natheil’s voice trailed off, as if he weren’t quite sure what he was saying. “As far as this wooden head of mine can tell me, I was born on the shores of this lake. Here I began running, from terror and confusion and because I was so cold, I thought I would die before I had a clear thought. My clothes had been torn off me in a violent storm… darkness, lightning, fire, screaming… and I had only the knife in my hand. I dared not stop”—he dragged the words out of himself—“and then sometime, though not at first as we believed, but later, in the lowlands, past the end of the meadow with the flowers, I knew I was pursued by servants of… I didn’t know what it was… this shadow that wants me. I believed that if the pursuers caught me, I’d never find what I was looking for.” His bleak face yearned for answers. “I was looking for you.”
I wanted very much to give him what he needed. But I was a plodding mundane, as Baglos had told me so often. “Let’s look at the journal again. As you said, we’re missing something.” I pulled the fragile volume from my pocket, trying to shelter it from the blustering wind. Baglos huddled beside me, while D’Natheil leaned against a boulder and stared at the lake. The page with the diagram held nothing new, and the following entry was a long description of the Writer’s difficulties with spring planting.
“Turn back to the riddles,” I said. “Maybe we missed one.” Baglos and I pored over the page in the gray light, searching for any that might have been written later than the original description of the little girl’s game. The later entries were written with a pen slightly wider at the tip than the originals. Still only five, plus the additional phrase the Writer had inserted with the telltale pen. Not phrased as a riddle, it had never seemed significant. “What is this again, Baglos? He asks if his daughter is not a marvel, but I don’t remember the exact words.”
The Dulcé read, “The day will come when men proudly cry out the name of our race, and it is my Lilith that will shine in their memory.”
“Cry out the name of our race…” My gaze met D’Natheil’s. With a trace of a smile, he bowed and returned to the edge of the lake.
Baglos whispered to me anxiously. “Will the name of the Dar’Nethi show us the Gate, then?”
“No. Not Dar’Nethi . …” Would D’Natheil think of it?
The Prince stood for a moment, eyes closed, the wind ruffling his light hair and the shabby cloak that could not obscure the truth of him. Then he opened his arms wide and cried out in a voice that thundered through the desolation, “J’Ettanne!” And as his voice called back to him through the thin, cold air, I felt a great release, as if the very stones had let go a monumental sigh at the command to share their long-held secret. Whispers and murmurings were all about us just beyond the range of hearing, quiet laughter, tears, whispers of pleasure, of love, of sorrow and grief and prayerful wonder, buzzing unseen like tiny insects about our ears, chaos existing in tandem with the wintry silence. But any expression of amazement was stilled in deeper awe of the doorway that now stood open in the stone cliff across the lake, an opening no less than fifty paces wide and three stories in height.
Without speaking, we repeated our journey around the lake, never taking our eyes from the incredible sight, never giving thought to pursuit or danger or anything beyond our moment’s wonder. The twin columns supporting the massive stone lintel were covered with the most graceful and intricate carvings: birds, beasts, flowers, all so perfectly worked that one could feel the life of them as they crowded the white stone. In the center of the rectangular lintel was carved an arched triangle, with a floweret in each sector it scribed.
The Prince stepped first through the gaping expanse. It was only right. The stronghold was part of his realm, marked with the emblem of his family. Baglos and I followed close behind. It was dark inside, but the Prince whispered the word illudie and torches blazed on every wall. I caught my breath as the great cavern came to life. Never had I seen a space of such beauty.
The cavern was so enormous, we could not see the roof of it. It was as if the whole mountain had been hollowed out and the stone walls polished smooth, displaying the mountain’s embedded treasury of tourmaline and jasper and lapis as magnificent waves of rich blues and greens, dazzling murals no human artist could replicate. Shining veins of quartz glittered in the torchlight like faceted gems, and a wide staircase with no visible supports twisted its way up through the center of the gleaming air to reach at least four levels of columned galleries carved from the cavern walls. The stairway and the galleries were connected to each other with a series of arched bridges, so delicate and graceful they could have been spun by a magical spider. And the bitter wind of the iron-gray lake was left behind, the air inside the cavern fresh and pleasantly warm.